


finding a place to call home

by RanOutofBatteries



Category: Naruto
Genre: Gen, found family again, im still in that phase where all i can think about is home and outside and becoming a person, that we're all meant to be
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-19
Updated: 2021-01-19
Packaged: 2021-03-17 22:41:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,735
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28856748
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RanOutofBatteries/pseuds/RanOutofBatteries
Summary: Their team never lost their experiences, but all the times he'd kept ahold of his memories they kept coming back to him, to all of them. Team 7 doesn't need to let their dreams go.They all feel younger again.
Kudos: 1





	finding a place to call home

here you go  
  


* * *

The clifftop stood high above the bright verdant leaves that covered the forest from the sun, shrouding even the most hidden of colors into complete silence. The fog continued to roil in from the east, cold winds grabbing the coats of their outerwear and sending them far off past their shoulders. Naruto didn't deign to follow after it; after all, it would be found once again.

True to his word, the wind died once again. The sun at his back, he stood facing the cliff where the Hokage's faces stood. They were weathered, years of soil and rain and rock dulling their features to the point of extinguishing their markings. He crept past the headbands lined with the symbol of their country and climbed down to the mouth of one of their once-venerated figures, kept clean without fail.

His paintbrush dripped with the ink it carried. He splattered it in a wide arc across its face, blemishing what used to be white rock with the offensive color of red. He kept going, continuing his prank with a dangerous vigor as the rope he'd attached swayed along with him. He didn't unbalance, however; whether by luck or by intuition, he kept perched at a perfect degree and continued without a drop from the bucket ever spilling out of place.

"Naruto," he heard a voice call from below him, and he looked down to see Sakura.

His brush stilled. He could never say that she could look _sad_ anymore in these times alone, but she looked somewhat disappointed in what he'd been doing in the past several hours. Her silent but constant slant of advisory disapproval had him nearly put the paint behind himself in guilty acquiescence, but the lid of the paint was above him on the cliff and he'd have to go back up to cover it up.

He put the handle of the paintbrush in between his teeth and scaled up the mountain, placing a giant footprint on the head of the Hokage.

Naruto was by her side the next time she blinked, waiting impatiently as he tilted his head from side to side. As a conversational start, he talked as soon as it became clear that she had no interest in letting him get past.

She waited for him patiently.

"This was meant to be a prank!" He said, as his own way of greeting her this morning. "You know, like an enlightening experience. Don't you remember, Sakura? I used to do this _aaalll_ the time!"

It was, actually, far before the sun was up and therefore considered too early before dawn. "What sort of enlightening experience," she asked, bringing one arm up to point emphatically at the four faces covered in paint, "does anyone get out of seeing _this_ act of vandalism first thing in the day?"

"I, uh... oh, I know! I can make it so that whoever wants to become the next Hokage can paint their faces-"

Sakura smacked him upside the head. " _Now,_ Naruto. You're getting it all off."

Naruto made a face and scowled behind her back, but he formed a handsign and let water pool from the recesses of his gut. It flowed from him like the rushing waters just before it became a waterfall, mouth spewing as his Water Release took out any dirt and debris. It almost removed a chunk of rock from the neck of the cliff.

She flipped the remainder of a half-uprooted tree behind her, and Naruto could hear the tremor it made as it crashed somewhere beyond the white sand of the training grounds.

Dirt shook from her feet as she kicked some of the residue off. "God damn it," she grumbled.

"Hey."

Sasuke dropped in between them as he moved all of the weight from the front of his feet, leaning back to redistribute his weight. He nodded slightly in greeting and said nothing else, only a glance at Sakura before staring forward yet again.

The fatigue of their orders made them slower, weaker, told him that the army of people they'd amassed was about to take off to the west toward the village in the River. Their Hokage had given them orders to close them off, despite the elders clamoring to hold it off until the next winter. Their group was only for the negotiations group, to fight in case the tactics failed to appease their enemies.

"Close your eyes, Naruto," she said one day. Naruto looked up at her through wiry locks, fluffy hair swaying in the wind. She'd worn black and grey since the day she'd cut her hair, removing with it any semblance of their childhood.

He wondered if that was the reason she refused to leave, despite her lacking in genjutsu.

"Why?" He finally answered, scrunching his nose at the prospect. There was so much to see that day, as the sun dappled the mountains with bright spots of light and splendor, wet grass revealing that it had rained just several hours before it rose. Konoha stood there, reds and greens and all the colors of the buildings they'd painted to make into their own.

"Do it or I'll kick you off the mountain."

And so he complied, grumpily as it were but still listening seriously to his advisor-to-be. Sakura didn't ask stupid things.

"Imagine we're living elsewhere," Sakura said, eyes farcast. "In a place where we're allowed to be ourselves as kids. A place where demons don't have to hide their colors anymore, or where little children could find their meaning, or where orphans don't have to keep up their walls and are allowed to feel relief or show weakness. We just have to be strong enough to do it. To try and reach that dream."

And for a moment he could see what she was talking about; a place by the sea, tinged in all the sunset and blue skies and darkened waves, the hint of a storm at his nose, and somewhere a part of him howled, ached for it.

The more rational part of his head declined, seeing as the Hokage was his one and only goal. He didn't want to leave. But this was something he'd wanted, too, didn't he? People loved the Hokage, so if he became one then the villagers could love him as well, right?

"I-" Naruto spoke, completely torn. He didn't know. "Could we really go there?"

Sakura turned to him. "If we can't find it already here waiting for us, then why shouldn't we make the future happen instead?"

Naruto, for once, thought retrospectively as he struggled through his response. Leaving was the coward's way out, his brain said, but his heart whispered, _let's go. Let's go to a place where we can be ourselves without rebuke or condemnation._

"I want to be Hokage," he said. "I want a chance that I'll be a Kage in a place where I am accepted for who I am, because I am, but also in a place where I have to prove to myself that I am better than I think."

Sakura slung an arm over his shoulder. He almost fell sideways. " _We're_ here."

And he looked up.

"I suppose you guys are."

"Hn."

"It's a start. If we believe in you, Naruto, do you need more people to start being Hokage?" She laughed. "What more than a team is required to become a leader who we admire already?"

He stared up at the two with stars in his eyes - Sakura, shaking him while grinning. Sasuke, waiting as if it was the only solution and Naruto was the dumb one to just figure it out now.

He saw how the three of them stood together, symbols of their team scattered across their outfits and their personalities - Sasuke, with the bandana tied around his arm where the three circles of their group were tied together, Sakura, with her necklace worn underneath her shirt with the Uchiha symbol and the Uzumaki charm on both sides of the metal, Naruto with his jacket emblazoned.

"God damn it, you guys," he said, tears forming in the corner of his eye. He wiped them off furiously. "Now I'm crying."

"What a loser." Sasuke rolled his eyes, but there was a hint of a smile there.

"That's why we love you, Naruto."

"I wouldn't go _that_ far."

"Alright, shut it. We're having a moment together."

And the three of them laughed, fought, conversed together until they no longer could do it as they've done for years. They each had their important tasks to fulfill, after all. But that night they abandoned their duties because they could.

And that night, three children disappeared into the forest, took their supplies with them. It was only until mid-afternoon where Sakura's mother realized that she were gone and had never returned, and when their group leader Kakashi tried hunting them down the moment he took note of their leave, they'd been long into the distance. It was as if fate was with them that night, however, because not even his pack could tail the hint of the fox nor child through a long rain and 8 hours of time distance.

Kakashi put down the dirt he'd been rubbing between two fingers, head raising. Messages were left to the people who cared, whether or not they'd tried. And despite being a terrible teacher he knew it _._

The people in Team 7 were _tired_. And the villagers had not cared about any of them, none, not once, not when he'd done so much to become better for strangers who didn't even see the person behind the demon fox, the orphan boy, the teacher and the civilian. Not one of them thought any further than it.

And the day after Kakashi went missing as well. There were search parties sent out after them - _not now, not when they were so close to it -_ but there were no such results. They all seem to have vanished. Somewhere out there, a missing-nin stood surrounded by his students, spending time as a team.

And the sky and night and sea took them in, hid them in places where they didn't wish to be seen, kept them in its leaves and branches and under the light where it saw all and loved them anyway.

And Naruto looked up at the skies above and smiled.  
  


* * *

  
it's short but I needed to write this


End file.
